Of Silk Saris and Mini-Skirts: South Asian Girls Walk the Tightrope of Culture.

Rajiva, Mythili

Amita Handa. Toronto: Women's Press, 2003.211 pp. $24.95 sc.

There has been a great deal of feminist research in Canada over the past twenty years on the myriad ways in which South Asian women cope with alienation, systemic racism, and the patriarchal demands of family / community. Until recently, the bulk of this research focused mainly on the immigrant experience (i.e. hostile immigration officials, unrecognised credentials, etc.): In the last few years, however, there has been a growing interest in second generation struggles with racism, identity, and belonging.

Handa's book is an articulate and richly textured account of South Asian girls' attempts to "fit in" without abandoning their diasporic roots. She argues that both mainstream and academic understandings of the second generation have been shaped by the "culture clash" model, which positions girls as torn between the "traditional" demands of a backward community and the "modern" expectations of a liberal society. This overly simplistic approach does not recognise the value that girls themselves place on being South Asian. Furthermore the model is predicated on a Eurocentric notion of western superiority. Drawing upon the work of Tony Bennett and Edward Said, Handa reconceptualises culture as both an ideology of western civilisation, progress, and development, and a body of discourses and social practices informed by concepts of nation, race, and ethnicity (pp. 17-18). Using this framework, she sets out to explore how contemporary notions of South Asianness have been shaped by a history of racism and exclusion that continues to inform girls' current tensions around identity and belonging.

The author's method of analysis combines a discussion of mainstream media coverage of the South Asian community in Toronto in the early 1990s with fourteen in-depth, qualitative interviews. She argues that these narratives must be understood in the context of racist nation-building practices, as well as subjects' identities as female adolescents. According to her, western adolescence is itself the product of discourses which constructed certain youth as dangerous, unstable, desirable, etc. Similarly, gender has operated as a social logic which positions women and girls as bearers of culture. In Canada, South Asian girls are perceived as the Other, and their attempts to belong are interpreted as a sign of their culture's limitations, rather than as a reaction to the pain of racism in Canadian society. At the same time, girls' and women's sexuality is stringently regulated in diasporic communities as girls struggle with gendered expectations that conflict with their desire to be part of dominant teen culture. Handa's interviewees express feelings of isolation, shame, and low self-esteem that may explain "a disturbing increase of depression, eating disorders, alcoholism and suicide attempts among young South Asian women in Toronto" (p. 30).

Interwoven with these voices is Handa's own narrative of belonging; her memories of youth and her ongoing negotiations with second generation identity. These vignettes poignantly evoke the lived experience of Other, as Handa describes her childhood shame at being seen with her sari-clad mother, her humorous dissembling with "uncles," and her sense of self, which in a racist society becomes defined through skin colour: "I do not remember when it began, me getting smaller than my body ... not being Canadian enough, not being Indian enough, not being white enough ... not being" (p. 2).

In clear accessible language, Handa brings together post-colonial concepts of diaspora and racialised identity with the lived experiences of young women. Her discussion of Indian youth subculture and the creation of "brown spaces" (schools, clubs, etc.) highlights youths' creative attempts to reclaim belonging. However, although she dutifully returns throughout the book to the question of youth, it is not clear why or how age as a relation of power shapes girls' experiences. Because she does not explicitly theorise age, there is a certain forced quality to its insertion that dilutes the strength of her arguments around the gendered, racialised construction of girls in mainstream discourses.

Finally, there is a noticeable silence on class. The 1960s wave of South Asian immigration brought in skilled, educated workers, often from middle / upper class backgrounds, many of whom have maintained that socio-economic status. Although she describes her own father as a highly educated professional, this privilege is not unpacked, nor does she attend to class in terms of either the literature or her interviewees' stories. This silence reduces the complexity of subjects' experiences by constructing them as monolithically oppressed by western society. It also unintentionally reifies the dominant national discourse which homogenises all non-whites as permanently excluded from any form of power, status, or authority in western nations.

Despite these criticisms, the book is a creative and compelling discussion of girls' negotiations with belonging. It is well researched and plugged into contemporary debates in critical race theory. Apart from its usefulness as a reference point for both scholars in the field as well as undergraduate or graduate students studying race and ethnicity, Of Silk Saris and Mini-Skirts represents an important contribution to the growing literature on second generation identity and youth culture in countries like Canada.

Mythili Rajiva

Department of Sociology

Carleton University

Emil: mrajiva @ ccs.ucarleton.ca